


Deprived

by Greyrey-lo (Punkpoemprose)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Jealous Kylo Ren, Kylo Ren Needs a Hug, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Minor Finn/Rose Tico, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Slow Build, Touch-Starved, eventual bendemption
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-23
Updated: 2019-05-12
Packaged: 2019-09-25 05:26:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17115263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Punkpoemprose/pseuds/Greyrey-lo
Summary: Rey wants nothing more than to sleep, but it's impossible to do so when her sworn enemy is on the other side of her mental walls projecting his pain. For both their sanity they believe they can come to an arrangement that makes their bond survivable, but when Rey rediscovers a man she was beginning to fall in love with under Kylo Ren's exterior "business" starts to feel more like pleasure. Comforting the Supreme Leader of the First Order was never in her plans but little of her interactions with Ben Solo ever go as planned.Originally a oneshot, currently updating.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Crysania](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crysania/gifts).



> Happy Holidays! I hope you like these space virgins awkwardly trying to take care of one another while doing their best not to actually talk about how badly they want each other!

She wakes up in the night feeling acute pain and despite being the thing that shook sleep from her, it makes her feel sapped of all energy. It’s not a tangible feeling so much as it’s an ache in her guts, a sense of unease so strong it makes her want to cry out or vomit. It’s a sensation she hasn’t had since she joined the resistance, since she’s had Leia’s maternal hand holding, Poe’s pats on the back, and Finn and Rose’s all enveloping hugs. Before that, when she’d been alone, when she’d been small, she’d wrapped her arms around herself tightly, curling up into a ball in her AT-AT just to stave it off.

“Touch starvation” is what she learned to know it as. She’d read about it on the holo-net in a fit of late-night curiosity after receiving her first ever datapad from Leia. She’d talked to Finn about it once, thinking that he, out of everyone, might know what she meant. But even he’d never had such an experience.

He hadn’t needed to wrap his arms around himself and weep just to sleep at night. Even as a trooper without familial love he’d had the comforting touch of a comrade often enough to not jump out of his skin when touched for the first time in years. Despite the way he and Rose often clung to one another he didn’t understand the sensation of feeling ill when not touched for even short periods of time. But he hadn’t needed to understand to give her the affection, he’d just done it.

 He’d been the first one to touch her with any kindness. He’d held her hand despite her protests, hugged her, patted her shoulder, and after a short time he was the one who had acclimated her to touch. She’d hoped that he’d understand, and while it hurt at first to be the only one to have had that sensation, she’d nearly forgotten it while experiencing the warmth that came from being around the others on the base. She needed only to walk into the mess for a cup of caf to be met with a friendly touch in one way or another.

She’d read, in her research, about babies in orphanages across the galaxy who died due to a lack of touch. The droids they used to care for the unwanted ones of the galaxy couldn’t comfort or soothe in the way a child needed to develop properly, so they simply perished without it. Even as a grown adult a lack of touch made a person want to die inside.

 _You’re projecting._ She managed, sitting up carefully, attempting to appear much less affected than she truly was. She’d done her best to keep him out. A passing conversation here and there that was almost civil, the occasional mental screaming match, and the extremely rare instance where they communicated meaningfully. Mostly their communications came in moments where blocking the other out became too taxing and they couldn’t keep their walls up any longer.

Rey sighed when he didn’t respond, she couldn’t see him, but she could feel him. It happened when they were holding on to the last shreds of their shields. It was silly really, and she sensed that they both knew it. They fought long and hard to deny a connection that wasn’t supposed to exist in the first place, but one that neither could dissolve entirely. She still sardonically thought to herself that it was Snoke’s greatest crime and cruelty to leave her with him like this.

_I’m feeling it too, so at least let me in if you’re not going to let me sleep._

The intensity of the discomfort waned slightly when he listened, and she found him in her space.

“Sorry,” he said, and she could feel his sincerity mingle with the pain in a gentle tug across their bond that always came when he was with her.

That bond felt more real to her than anything else, it made no sense and was everything to her at the same time. Sometimes Ben Solo didn’t feel like a person when she was constantly planning the downfall of Kylo Ren, but Supreme Leader or no, the connection between them was solid. It was that swirling red thread in the Force that she couldn’t see, but always felt. It reminded her that he was always there, just on the other side of their mental shields. He was real, she could feel him, and he was hurting.

She turned to where she knew he’d be, but she was unprepared to see him. His hair was disheveled, his head between his knees, curled up in the corner of her small room. Normally when she could see him, he was domineering, furious with her and the Resistance. They would exchange insults and taunts until one or the other was so furious they managed to slam their shields shut.

 _He shouldn’t look so small_ , she thought to herself, knowing he couldn’t hear her. She knew when he was in her head, and he could only ever be in as far as she allowed him. It hurt to see him so curled up, and she couldn’t help but have a moment of curiosity as to whether she ever looked so pitiful. She was sure that she had, skin and bones in her small wreck, full of shriveled plant life and bits of equipment that had belonged to long dead men and women. This was the first time since the Supremacy that he’d allowed her to see him so pitifully distraught.

There was something that cracked in her chest at seeing him in such a state. He was normally an imposing man, the scourge of the free galaxy and the enemy she was supposed to loathe. But here, on the cold durasteel floor of her quarters on some frozen backwater planet he was a man attempting to curl in on himself to avoid unraveling. He was mortal, life-size and desperate to soothe the ache within him that he could never truly calm alone.

She knew what it felt like to be dying inside.

She slipped from her mattress, and her feet ached with the cold. It sent a jolt up her spine, and she longed to pull on the socks that sat in a cargo bin at the foot of her bunk. It seemed cruel to make him wait, but after a moment of consideration she walked to the side, opened the bin, and tugged them on. If anyone had told her back on Jakku that she’d experience a night colder than those of the desert, she would have laughed them off.

She wasn’t laughing now.

She hadn’t seen him in a very long time, and she couldn’t deny the discomfort she felt as she approached him. She knew, not that he’d ever say it aloud, that he hated it when people treated him like a wounded animal, but she couldn’t help but move slowly toward him. He looked so pale in the dim moonlight coming through the window, and she had a feeling he hadn’t slept in days. He was always more unpredictable when he hadn’t slept. It wasn’t as if she were afraid of him so much as she was frightened by the pull that brought her, one foot in front of the other, over to the space he barely filled.

“Ben.”

She crouched down beside him and was nearly knocked back by the force of the longing he projected across their bond when he heard his name. It doubled the pain in her gut, and she nearly curled in on herself the same way he was.

“Breathe,” she whispered, lingering in his space, but not edging any closer as she attempted to combat the sensation. Reminding her body, mentally, that the sensation wasn’t hers, that she had no reason to feel it, didn’t help at all. The force didn’t ever seem to have any interest in rationality. It was a bit like a toddler in that way. It wanted what it wanted, and it would do as it deemed fit. Fighting it was only making them sick.

The sleepless nights she’d been having were just as much her fault as they were his. She hated to admit it, but as little as she knew about the Force from the Jedi texts that she was desperately attempting to decipher by day, she knew that it was pulling her to him. It was selfish to fight against the will of the Force, but it felt just as selfish to give in.

“Slow,” she continued, “deep, in and out, it helps. I promise it helps.”

He made a vaguely noncommittal sound and Rey tried not to project her anxiety back to him when it came to her ears like a whine. He had seemed in better shape after being shot with a bowcaster, and she knew that her proximity wasn’t making things any better for him.

He was lost in his own head, trapped there by the loneliness that she knew was physically painful. It made little sense to her that he was so lost to it all when he’d never been this bad before, but she imagined that maybe, before the Supremacy, he’d had at least the occasional gentle hand of his master to keep him steady.

She saw it then through his eyes. The way he’d sometimes do well enough to earn a gentle touch, and the pain that somehow felt warranted to him when he failed. She watched and was sickened by the predatory touch of a now dead man to the face of a terrified boy, the surge of energy through him on an occasion where the threshold for his approval wasn’t meant. Her stomach turned and she forced herself out of his memories to return to her own.

She recalled how they’d both nearly jumped out of their skin the first time their fingers had touched. She remembered feeling his want, seeing it in his eyes.

“Ben,” she began again, “I know, but you’re going to keep us both up…”

Tears were forming in her eyes and she knew that they were his and hers. He was suffering, and she for some ill-advised reason, was in pain for seeing him suffer.

Rationality, again, was useless against the sensation as she told herself frantically that she should be happy to see him in pain. It hurt her even worse to think that way, and so she shook her head and irritably obeyed the urge she’d had since his arrival.

“Kriff,” she breathed, reaching a shaking hand out towards him.

A sob wracked his body when she tangled her fingers into his hair, but she only felt a strange sense of pleasure and comfort over the bond. Logically, from her own experience, she knew that he was overstimulated, but the bond between them was humming with positive energy all running towards her at once.

His hand was atop hers, holding it still as he shook, and she wondered whether he had been suffering with that untouched feeling for longer than she had. She knew she should snatch her hand away, but it felt good to touch him, even lightly.

He felt so solid to her, so real. This was Ben Solo, the boy who desperately wanted companionship, the man who she’d come to feel something for. He was the one who understood her, the one she’d felt tugging on the other end of the galaxy since a time before she was comfortable admitting.

When she rested herself back against the wall and her side brushed up against his, she heard him choke out a groan. She could feel his shame and ache and she longed to comfort him in ways she couldn’t put into words.

She leaned into him more purposefully and his hand squeezed hers gently before finally moving away.

“Breathe Ben,” she whispered again, “I know it hurts, I know it’s all too much and not enough, I know.”

He inhaled deeply, and Rey felt like she was the one who finally exhaled a held breath when he began to relax slightly.

She shifted her hand from his hair to the side of his head, cupping her palm over his ear as if it would somehow filter out some of the stimulation she was providing him. She knew exactly what he was feeling and she didn’t need their bond to know. It was all coming back to her. The desperation, the pain, the embarrassment, and the need for it to never end.

She shushed him gently, encouraging him wordlessly to keep breathing as he attempted to calm himself.

As he straightened himself slightly, her hand moved to his shoulder, and then slowly down his arm and back up again. It was how she soothed herself, and as he unfolded himself further she could tell it was helping him as well.

“On Jakku,” she muttered, not sure, even as she began, why she was telling him, “sometimes it would hurt so bad that I would walk through the market just to rub up against strangers. I know.”

His eyes opened, bloodshot as they met hers. He looked shocked, but then he didn’t. It was a flash of an expression she couldn’t quite understand, and then he was staring at the floor and the feeling of shame rolled back through him. She felt it so sharply that she nearly didn’t notice she was being moved when he pulled her into his arms and sighed.

The sensation of pain faded after a minute of sitting like they were, intertwined on the cold floor of her room. It felt like a century, pinned awkwardly against his body as they sat, but when he let her go it felt too soon.

Their bond was wrapping around them both like a warm blanket and Rey knew that this was what they were supposed to do. He seemed to understand it as well as she pulled him up from the floor and lead him awkwardly to the much warmer, albeit cramped confines of her bunk.

She still couldn’t help herself but to marvel at just how present he was in her space. He took up room on her mattress, the blankets covered him, and his presence was very real to her. She could feel the press of his body next to hers, she could feel the rise and fall of his chest as his breathing regulated itself and she couldn’t help but to notice the scent of soap that clung to his hair.

“I know you won’t believe me,” he said gently as she rearranged herself to be comfortably close but not overly so, “but I am sorry.”

Rey sighed, “I know.”

He nodded, and she didn’t push him away when he stretched out, encroaching into her space just enough to have solid contact with her side.

“If you need to,” she began, barely believing her own words, “you can come when you’re feeling like that. It’ll be better for me if you do… sometimes when you project like that it’s…”

“Painful,” he whispered, “I know, sometimes when you have nightmares… I know we both deny it, but I can feel you at night a lot. I don’t know if it’s being tired, letting our guard down, or what it is, but even when we’re in different cycles I know when it’s night for you because I can feel you hurt, I can feel you panic…”

“I can’t promise I’ll always be free,” she said in response, “but I think if we can be civil… like traders do… I think we can make this work. Just to avoid the pain of course.”

She was shaken by the strange sense of sadness that came to her so strongly but was gone in a flash.

“Of course. Like a business arrangement.”

She choked down words that she wanted to say, words that tasted like treason on her tongue when she reminded herself that he wasn’t just Ben, but also Kylo Ren. She couldn’t trust her mouth to not disagree, to not be honest with the way she felt about their arrangement, so she kept it shut and simply nodded.

He sighed in return and she felt their exhaustion crash over them both in a wave. She’d had a long day, of course, but she could sense that he hadn’t slept in very, very long time, and so in a moment of curiosity and weakness she rolled onto her side and projected back at him, but this time it was a sense of comfort, an invitation.

She managed to keep her embarrassment imperceptible, at least to the force, when she felt his body press into her back. If he noticed the blush heating her cheeks he didn’t seem to notice, and she was grateful for the long clothes she’d worn to bed when she thought about the much shorter sleeves he had on behind her. She wasn’t sure she was ready for that much skin on skin contact yet.

“Thank you,” he mumbled, and she inclined her head slightly in understanding as she closed her eyes.

When she would awake in the morning, he would be gone, but as she dozed she took a strange comfort in his presence and found peace in her dreams of green fields and earthen brown eyes.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has been rattling around in my head for a while. Strap in for more messy feelings. I have no idea how many chapters this is going to be, but here goes! This was supposed to be a oneshot, so don't feel obligated to read on if it no longer interest you!

Their arrangement suited them well enough. He would hold her, she would hold him, and they never spoke of it. They never had a conversation about the way they came together seeking comfort and how often they received that and more in one bed or the other. It was all so sweet and virginal when they found each other across space. Passion existed in those moments, but in the form of compassion or in a repressed state that couldn’t be felt, even over their bond.

They were careful, only coming when they could find no other manner of calming themselves. He came to her when he felt like he was falling apart. She came to him when she was forgetting herself. They were both crumbling under the pressure of a war that consumed their lives, a war they were on opposite sides of until no one was watching.

The last time he had come to her, the night before, was after a plot against his life had slipped past his radar. It wasn’t the first attack against him, and it wouldn’t be the last, but it was the first time he didn’t see it coming. She wouldn’t have ever seen him again, he’d be dead or worse if it weren’t for the fact that, despite his disavowal of it, he seemed to have his father’s luck on his side.

It had been an inside job, some group of dissenters within the First Order itself attempting to seize his power for their own with some well-placed poison. It was to be served in his water at a meeting he’d decided not to attend at the last possible moment. It had been the misfortune of another officer that he’d decided to drink the Supreme Leader’s water and had died convulsing on the cold metal floor of the ship’s meeting room.

He’d seemed to have been shaken by it, despite a large portion of the galaxy, Rey’s compatriots included, having a bounty on his head. What terrified Rey more than anything, was that she had to hide the fact that the only one more broken up about the situation than him was her.

The last time she had sought refuge in his arms was a week earlier when the resistance had lost comms with Poe Dameron while he was out flying an intel mission. Kylo, for his part, hadn’t been at all bothered by it. Yet, for all his thinly veiled displeasure at her care for her fellow Resistance member, he’d been gentle with her, helping her sleep through the night. Such was his way, few kind words, but many gentle touches and the illusion of safety in his arms.

When it was daylight for them both, no such arrangement was viable. At night they touched, quieted each other’s nerves and made an odd sense of normalcy for themselves in the ritual of hushing, brushing away tears and lying so close together they could feel the other’s breath and heart beats. 

During the day they raged. When the sun shone on them, they couldn’t meet without an argument and their bond was unpredictable at best. It made the war around them pale in comparison to the war between them.

He was seething, but Rey, somewhat cramped, elbow deep in the guts of a transport shuttle, was paying him no mind. His anger was giving her a headache, but she chose to ignore it. She knew that the only thing that made him angrier than being argued with was being ignored.

_Open up. We need to talk._

She wasn’t sure how his words could feel physically sharp in her mind, but she didn’t give him the satisfaction of a wince nor did she provide him with the dignity of a response. It was exhausting, both mentally and physically, to keep him out. She blamed it on the fact that the force only seemed to ever want to connect them when their emotions were running high. Their connection, their _bond_ , wasn’t like a comm. It wasn’t nearly so reliable, and it was also so much more than a way to talk.

Sometimes if she focused intently enough on him when they were both at ease she could get a few words to him and he could do the same in return, but it was rare. She thought that it had less so to do with the difficulty of the task and more to do with the fact that they were seemingly never both feeling calm. Sometimes she wished she could talk him into meditating with her, so that they could work on controlling their bond. She had learned through anger and annoyance how to push it shut, but if she had a better handle on how it opened, she thought that maybe shutting it wouldn’t be so painful for them both.

She went back to her work, tightening the bolts on a panel she had just rewired. She felt him pushing against her shields with a vengeance. It felt like he was throwing the entirety of his hulking frame against a wall that just happened to be in her head. She wasn’t one to give in to his tantrums, but she knew if he kept up the barrage for very much longer, he’d be exhausted, and she’d probably vomit from the headache he was giving her.

_If I let you in will you drop the petulant child act?_

She didn’t wait for his response and kept her eyes on the innerworkings of the shuttle. With a roll of her eyes she knew he couldn’t see, but might be able to feel, she stopped resisting and felt the familiar, even strangely comforting tug of the Force that announced his presence. She kept that sensation to herself, unwilling to let him know about the part of her that sighed contentedly every time he was there with her across the galaxy, safe and sound.

She could sense the anger rolling off him in waves, the fury that was uncontainable within him once it boiled up to the surface. He was like a kettle that couldn’t let out its steam, prone to blowing up when the pressure got too high. She’d seen him explode before, the wildness in his eyes when he was finally able to let loose. She remembered what it was like to be at his back when he was like that, her own fury flowing with his own in a battle that felt more like a dance. She wondered what it would feel like to have it all directed at her, well and truly, because even now, and in all their battles before, she knew that he held something back for her. Even if he should want her dead, he didn’t, and the opposite was true as well as much as they both knew it and wouldn’t admit it.

She decided to keep her back to him, the ultimate proof that she wasn’t afraid of him, and an odd kindness to them both in allowing him a moment to collect himself. Sometimes when he broke into her space furiously she could see tears in his eyes, running down his cheeks, and it only made him more upset when she noticed. Frankly she didn’t quite like the reaction it brought up in her either, the need to soothe that she only allowed herself to indulge in during their nighttime rendezvous. It always seemed to tug at the edges of her consciousness when she saw him cry. She could picture herself kissing his tears away, and that scared her more than he ever could.

“You’ll be happy to know your pilot is coming back.”

She didn’t turn. He wanted her to, she could feel it, feel his need to be looked at. He wanted her attention, evidently deciding to substantiate her claims of his childishness by standing behind her and pouting. She almost laughed at the way he was acting but thought better of it. As funny as it would be to have him stamping his feet all the way back to his side of the bond, she did want to know more information if she could get it. However, she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction he wanted in order to get it.

The news was good, but of course he had practically growled it to her. She was curious why it upset him so much. She knew that Kylo Ren had no love for any Resistance member, but Ben Solo had been kind when she’d been concerned. He’d held her and while he hadn’t said anything particularly nice about Poe, he’d been supportive of her in her worries. While he could be a nuisance, mostly to Hux, Rey couldn’t imagine Poe had any direct hand in injuring Kylo in any manner that could justify the way he seethed over his wellbeing.

“Of course,” she said, attempting to find something else to work on in the ship’s guts, any excuse to not turn around and face him. She wasn’t running away, she was calmly refusing to engage. A sarcastic thought, all her own, wondered how long that calm would last.

“I’m glad Poe’s coming back. He’s a good man.”

She bristled when she heard a scoff behind her, and a mocking laugh. She couldn’t imagine what he could possibly say about Poe that she wasn’t already imagining. He could tell her about however many First Order personnel he was personally responsible for the deaths of, he could relay the information she already knew about his penchant for rebelling against authority. He could say whatever he liked about Poe and she wouldn’t react, she would just maintain her mask of composure and retain her sense of joy at the return of a man that she was beginning to call a friend.

If Luke’s training, as brief as it was, had taught her anything, it was the importance of focus. She ignored the rage he was projecting and paid her full attention to a bolt that didn’t need to be tightened but provided a distraction nevertheless. She found solace in the orderliness of the interconnected wires and durasteel that made the ship. It was easy to allow herself to get lost in repairs, in tightening bolts and keeping things running. In another life she often thinks that she would have liked to have been a resistance mechanic.

Her daydreams often hold days rewiring with Rose, imagining how much she would have liked it to have known her for years. It would have been like having a sister, even if Rose already had Paige. Rey felt like she knew her through hearing Rose’s stories, but she liked to imagine what it would have been like to have a found family in them, to work on Paige’s ship with Rose and to eat with them and Kaydel everyday, to talk about the cute boys on base, and to have felt normal. She wouldn’t have met Finn though, and both having his friendship and seeing how much he and Rose were in love made her glad that things had worked out the way they did, even if it wasn’t as idyllic as her daydreams.  

“I’m sure he loves it when you say that about him. Did you come to that conclusion before or after he gave you that pretty boy smile? Was he a good man before or after he brought you into his ship, before or after he showed off for you like you were the first girl he’d ever shared his cockpit with? Or did he share more than that with you? Did he call you his, Desert Rat?”

She hadn’t expected him to go in that direction of all the possibilities in the galaxy. Had she not been so shocked, she might have picked up on the jealousy of his tone, but her focus was far too insular to make such a determination. She spun on him, having the good sense to keep her voice low as she pointed the hydrospanner in her hand at him with more of a violent intent than she could ever remember having while wielding a saber.

“You have no idea what you’re speaking about.” She said simply, because he truly didn’t. She was furious, and she couldn’t truly explain to herself why because he was entirely off base. Yet the energy around them was crackling and sharp like it was on Jakku right before an electrical storm.

“Oh, don’t I?” he said, “Seems like I’ve struck a nerve there. So what is it? Was he a good man when he brought you into his bed? Or did that come after, trying to rectify what you did with him and your vows, so you decided he needed to be a good man to make it all justified? Don’t worry Jedi you can have sex, you just can’t have feelings about it.”

“Shut up,” she seethed through gritted teeth. Gods how she longed to slap him, to scream. He infuriated her. “Just shut your kriffing mouth Ren.”

“Don’t worry,” he said, ignoring the spanner, walking forward to look her in the eye, “he’ll be back anytime now, you won’t need to look for warmth elsewhere. It seems our business is concluded.”

It all fell into place then. She understood why he was so angry, why he seemed so furious that Poe Dameron was on a ship back to the base as they spoke. It wasn’t business to him, and though she’d never admit it to him, it wasn’t for her either. He was jealous. She would have laughed about it if she weren’t so mad. She was going to make sure he was very acutely aware of the truth, at least part of it, and she wasn’t going to make it easy for him.

“I turned Poe down as soon as he started,” she said, not breaking eye contact, her face splitting into a wicked grin behind which she hid the anxiety that was growing in her chest, because there were components to the truth she couldn’t speak, ones that she hadn’t faced herself and ones she certainly wasn’t ready for him to be aware of, “I’m not some doe eyed bantha that can’t help herself when someone finally wants her. You would know that of course if you thought for a minute, or do you not remember who left?”

She knew she shouldn’t take any pride or joy in the way his face fell at the mention of their time on the Supremacy, but she did. Frankly it all felt justified when he’d just used their nights as an attack. It was usually off-limits to bring it up, an unspoken agreement to not weaponize that vulnerability. She squeezed the handle of the tool tighter until her fingernails bit into her palm, and she kept her jaw clenched against an uninvited sob that was weaseling its way to her lips slowly but surely. She called it frustration, but she knew it was a more complicated emotion she was still actively attempting to ignore.

“Besides,” she said, her voice falling flat, “since when has sharing a bed made anyone a good man?”

With that their bond cracked, and the space in front of her was empty. He’d slammed his shields closed so tightly and with such speed that it made her head feel as if it were rattling. She hated the way she fell off balance, sliding down the side of a metal panel onto the floor as she fought against the sensation of emptiness that was always there when he left.

The air was too thin, but she reached out, not for him, but for anyone nearby. She was still unsure about manipulation of others using the force, particularly when she couldn’t focus, so she was grateful when she realized her section of the hanger was empty. It was all the information she needed to finally allow herself to break down.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The plan is to update on Fridays from here on out, but I finished editing this chapter early, so here we are! I tend not to write chapter summaries or anything like that, but if anyone would prefer I did let me know in the comments. Tags will be updated as updates happen and I'll try to ensure relevant trigger warnings are present. Thanks to everyone who has read/ liked/ commented so far!

The next time Poe flirted with her, she responded to it in the same way she’d seen Rose respond to Finn. The same way she’d seen girls do in holo-dramas and around the base. She batted her lashes and smiled and laughed at his jokes. She’d allowed herself to flirt back, and he didn’t seem to notice her bad feelings about the whole situation.

She felt like it was all some odd form of pantomime, like she wasn’t the one acting the part of the flattered young lady receiving compliments with a blush. She was watching it all in the third person. She was playing out a scene that someone else had constructed when she was being let into a pilot’s seat of his ship, Black One, and giggling when a flight helmet was placed over her head by the kindly smiling man. He was telling her about the multiple times he’d had to rebuild the ship and how many tight spots they’d been through.

She was just so happy that he was back, and it was her true feelings of joy that had lead her to go so far. She was just acting out the part of the beautiful young paramour to an ace pilot, but when it came down to it she was actually happy to be with him. Her laughs and smiles in reaction to his stories were genuine, just as they were genuine with Finn, but the rest seemed like a farce. It was another Rey entirely, puppeteering her body through an approximation of what it would be to flirt with a dashing young man that she liked.

She was pulled back to herself fully when she realized that he was leaning towards her with a look in his eye. Even she understood it as the search for permission before raising the stakes. But they couldn’t. She couldn’t. It didn’t hurt like the pain she felt in the Force, but there was a stab of pain in her heart when she shook her head and watched his face fall.

“It’s okay Rey,” he said gently, his voice as kind because behind all his hot headedness and bravado he was a good man, “I had a feeling.”

He was smiling at her when he walked her back to her room, and it didn’t feel awkward when he hugged her. “We make better friends anyway.”

She couldn’t disagree, but when the door closed behind her, she wasn’t sure if the tears in her eyes had come from relief or sadness. She hadn’t wanted anything more than his friendship, and she had it, but there was a moment, as ridiculous as it seemed, where she found comfort in the act of it all. It was a hurt she sometimes felt when she witnessed the gentle way that Finn and Rose touched, a hurt that had come as she witnessed up close the warmth that comes when two people fall in love.

“Alone again?”

She’d felt the tug, she’d known that he was there, but she couldn’t shove him out. She longed to, particularly at his words, but she was too exhausted and unfocused to make a real attempt.

There was no venom behind his words anyway, so she couldn’t even pull from anger to rid herself of him. Despite the way his words rankled her, he sounded sheepish, maybe even rueful. She hadn’t seen him since their argument in the hanger, but she’d felt him hours later, unable to keep himself from projecting a thousand feelings at once, most of them various forms of anger and regret. He was calmer now. It would be easy to rile him up and get him to leave by saying that she’d just returned from doing everything he’d suspected with Poe, but she didn’t want to lie. Not about that, and not to him.

“Can you just go?” she asked, “I don’t think I can make you leave, but I’m tired and I don’t want to talk.”

Realistically beyond not wanting to lie she just didn’t want to argue again. That’s all they’d done lately. The Force connected them, she’d yell or he would, and then they’d get into a battle over one thing or another before they’d both leave angry.

She wasn’t looking at him, her eyes were only on her bed as she slipped off her boots, then her leggings, not caring about his presence as she undressed herself. It was too cold in the room to not wear her pajamas, but she couldn’t bring herself to put in the effort as she tossed off her tunic and crawled into her bunk in just her underclothes.

He watched her undress, and she couldn’t be bothered by it, despite a vague wave of embarrassment she’d felt come across their connection. She was glad for his discomfort. She wasn’t going to wear her clothes to bed and be uncomfortable, not when he couldn’t have been bothered to put on a cowl the first time they were connected. If he was embarrassed by watching her undress, he could leave.

She closed her eyes and laid back in the bed. She didn’t have it in her to fight with him tonight, so if he wasn’t going to leave of his own free will, she was going to bore him to death by sleeping. At least if she was asleep she wouldn’t have to deal with the clawing in her chest and the sensation of loneliness. At least the pain in her nightmares was familiar and charted territory.

She was surprised when she felt him press into the mattress beside her. He let out a truly exhausted sigh that she fully understood. They could war all they liked but sleep always won in the end.

“What if I don’t say anything?”

She opened her eyes to see his back. He was staring down at the floor from his space beside her, and she knew that he was just as exhausted as she was. She knew that he was feeling just as lonely and lost, and while it pained her to let him back in, she wouldn’t fight him. This was Ben, not Kylo.

“What about it?”

He sighed again, thinking through his words, and she felt any resistance she had to him slip away as he shifted uncomfortably in her bed.

“You said you don’t want to talk, if I don’t say anything, can I stay? I probably shouldn’t talk anyway,” he muttered, “it always comes out wrong.”

She felt warm, and for the first time with him, it wasn’t because of their bond. He wasn’t projecting, and she had her emotions reigned in well enough that he seemed genuinely surprised when she nodded and stuck out a hand to close her door’s lock with the Force. She was still learning, still practicing her skills, but it was a nifty trick she’d seemed to have mastered. No one ever really tried to open her door anyway, just Rose and sometimes Finn, but it brought her comfort to turn the lock. It was the last step to make her room into her space and her space alone each night. Except of course for the fact that with every visit from Ben it was beginning to feel more and more like their space, not just hers.

True to his word, he said nothing when she pulled him down onto the bed and wrapped herself up in his arms. It was a strange sensation, to have him at her mercy without protest, but much like the way Poe had looked at her before he had moved to kiss her, she prodded gently at their bond to ensure that everything was alright as they curled up together in her bed.

He was warm against her and his body heat was enough to keep her from needing to get up and put on clothes. She pressed her face into his neck. He smelled nice, as he always did. She wondered if it was just him or if it was being able to shower more than twice a week. She thought that there would be no shortage of water on an ice planet, but just like everything else on the rebel base, it was in short supply, constantly cycled through pipes to and from the treatment system and apparently leaking out somewhere that the few remaining maintenance personnel couldn’t locate. She was putting serious thought into attempting to pinpoint and fix the problem herself, not just to fix it, but also to save poor Rose the headache.

He returned her tenderness when he untied her buns and gently stroked the fallen strands. It felt nice, the combination of his body encircling her protectively, and the soft way his larger fingers were brushing against her scalp. She was always surprised by the softness of his hands, the gentleness they were capable of. When he touched her in these moments, she felt at peace.

She wondered if it ever felt that good to him when she did the same. There had been a few nights between the first and their fight where she’d done her best to wrap her body around his, her fingers combing through his hair as he tried not to cry but inevitably failed. She couldn’t ever fully hold him like he could hold her, their size difference even more evident than normal when they attempted to comfort one another, and yet she always did her best to make him feel safe. It was difficult on the nights where sobs wracked his body, leaving him shaking, but she always held on to him, like their embrace was the only thing keeping them aloft and from pitching over the edge into a place they could never come back from. Sometimes she was sure that it was the reason the Force connected them, to let them hold on to each other and keep them from going mad.

She shifted until she was comfortable and then she let herself relax completely. She’d given up on fighting against the relief she found in his arms. It was useless, and she told herself that she wouldn’t want to fight against the will of the Force. She was certain that’s what the link between them was, evidenced by the way their bond was flowing between them like waves against the shore at low tide.

_You don’t always say the wrong thing. You often say the wrong thing and I think there’s a difference there. If you don’t say anything out loud you’re not technically talking._

She was surprised by his laugh. Subdued as it was, she was certain it was the most good-natured sound she’d ever heard him make, and even if it sounded just a bit unnatural, it made her feel warm all over. She hadn’t heard him laugh before. Of course, she had heard him sarcastically chuckle on a few occasions, but this was a sound that she wanted to hold onto, something she was already willing herself to remember.

She wished that she had been looking at him when he did it, if only to attach the sound to something more solid, if only to see the grin she loved on his face and to have it for herself. These moments never lasted if she wanted them to.

Though she’d never admit it, she did like to remember them fondly in the daylight, especially when she saw couples around the base displaying their affection to each other publicly. They used to have a policy against it, but when people almost die enough times, you tend to let them make out in whatever corridors they want. She didn’t have that, she worried that she never would, but late at night with him she had this. And despite everything that made it complicated and wrong, it felt right.

_Thank you._

There was something intimate about their unspoken conversations, particularly when he was corporeal to her. It thrilled her that they could talk without speaking, that their connection ran that deep. She longed for more moments like this amidst the war that they were both fighting. She’d give just about anything for it and that scared her.

_Do you think this is ever going to go away?_

He stiffened at the question but was quick to calm when she nuzzled her nose into the side of his neck, projecting her feelings to him cautiously. She sent him her trepidation, her conflict, and also the way it felt to her to be held by him. She sent him her safety and her concern and waited for him to collect himself. It felt like too much and not enough. He was still her enemy she shouldn’t let him know how comfortable she was with him, he could use it against her, but it was hard not to when she was in his arms.

_I think if it was going to, it already would have. Even if Snoke did start this… which I’m beginning to doubt, it should have passed when he did. I think this bond… I think it’s here to stay Rey._

She nodded, sighing against his neck, and taking a sort of embarrassed joy from the way he squirmed from her breath tickling his skin. He could feel every little touch, just as she could.

If she didn’t know better, she would have thought that he was truly right there with her, completely in her world. But she did know better. He couldn’t see anything other than her. It was strange, complicated, and yet she could ignore it all to have him in these moments. Even if it made her a traitor. Even if it would make her a snake in the grass in the eyes of every man and woman outside her door, even though she remembered the throne room on the Supremacy and how everything between them had to end, these stolen quiet moments with Ben Solo were worth it.

_If this is going to last… if until the end comes, we’re linked…_

She couldn’t finish the thought. They were on opposite sides of a war, and she couldn’t imagine its end. It wasn’t because she didn’t long for the end of conflict, but because she didn’t like what needed to become of them to make it end. She didn’t want to speak in terms of his death or hers.

She pressed her eyes closed and took a deep breath in, letting it out slowly as she shifted her focus from the topic at hand to the way he was still gently playing with her hair, brushing it with his fingers, twisting strands, it was all so intimate to her. No one else, save for Rose, but in a very different way, ever touched her hair, not since her mother. She was a faceless shape now, as she had been for a long time, a promise Rey had invented for herself and thin fingers twisting brown hair into three buns.

His silence was expectant, knowing that she wasn’t done speaking. He didn’t fight it when she pushed away from him slightly, rolling over so that they were no longer touching but were laying facing one another just a hair’s breadth away. There was no concern on his face, and she imagined he didn’t need their bond to sense that she wasn’t about to send him away.

_If this is going to work… Ben, if we’re going to court this… thing between us, this bond, we have to stop fighting._

He raised a brow at her and she almost smiled. There were some expressions that were completely in character for Ben that she never expected to see on the face of Kylo Ren. She understood what he was pointing out, even without words.

_Well of course we’ll still be fighting, but what I mean is we’ll have to let this be a neutral zone. It’s going to kill us both if we don’t._

She was suddenly very aware of the way his eyes were scanning her face, and it was all she could do to stave off a blush. She was so close, all it would take was a few slight shifts and she could press her lips to his. Those dreams she’d had at night were off limits, the ones where she was more than kind to him, the ones where she gave in to all the things she’d ever wanted, and he gave them to her unabashedly and in spades.

_I feel it too._

It was an echo of a former conversation, a ghost of the past that threw them both off balance for a moment once he said it. It was true of course, everything that she felt across their bond, he felt too, and vice versa. But it meant more than the truth. It was a promise. They were going to try to make this relationship at least survivable.

She wasn’t sure she could even call it a relationship. A relationship is what Rose and Finn had, what Poe had been looking for with her, or at least what she thought he had been. The Jedi texts in her footlocker strongly warned against such things, but attachment was never something she’d had in the desert of Jakku, not really, and she didn’t see how she had been made any better for it. Still though, outside her locked door they were enemies. She wouldn’t call it a relationship. Maybe she could call it a diversion.

The look in his eye before he pulled her back to him and resumed his work with her hair told her that she wasn’t the only one hoping, against it all, for something more.

This was never about business.

***

When she awoke in the morning she’d slept in, missing breakfast. Normally there was no greater catastrophe to her than missing a meal, but she was inclined to let it slide when she felt more well rested than she’d been in a very long time. Of course, when she rolled over, she found him long gone, but when she walked to the adjoining fresher she realized that he’d allowed her a reminder of their night.

In the mirror she found herself with pink cheeks and a single small braid upon her temple.

_I didn’t know you could braid hair._

He was lightyears away, and she could still feel him blush. It felt so easy to reach him, and yet neither appeared to the other. There was a time and place for that now.

_There’s a lot you don’t know about me Rey._

She reached up and tucked the braid behind her ear, running her thumb down the intricate pattern appreciatively.

_Then teach me._


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little late, but here we are! It's not always going to be smooth sailing y'all, but here's some set up for what's to come!

Rey huffed and swore in the dim light that she saw her breath. She was pressed into a tiny, just above freezing crawlspace below the base. Her shirtfront was absolutely soaked, and she was regretting her decision to hunt down and repair the leaky pipe that was letting the base’s water supply run out into the frozen tundra.

Beyond the walls of what was more or less a concrete bunker, a remnant left behind by the Rebels that came before them in the times of the Galactic Empire, was nothing but ice and wind. It was hardly an ideal environment, even without the many infrastructure problems that came with any building that had been uninhabited by any sentient species since a time before Rey was born. No one left the base outside a cockpit and while they’d occasionally send some poor fools out to collect snow to refill their stores of water, Rey knew it would be safer for everyone involved if she could just get the pipes fixed.

“Are you sure you don’t need help?”

The sound came from outside the small access door she’d crammed herself through, and she smiled. Even if she was stuck in the half-frozen bowels of the cobbled together concrete and durasteel monstrosity they were calling home, there were worse places to be. Specifically, places without Rose Tico.

“No, no I have it, we wouldn’t both fit in here anyway.”

Rey stretched her hand out ahead of her to a valve that was just out of reach. She had no idea how anyone could have ever done repairs on the base before her, unless of course the Rebels employed children to fix the pipes and wiring, though she also supposed that the place could have been built to be repaired by members of a species smaller than most humanoids. She wasn’t the most educated on galactic history, but she did know that before the Galactic Concordance the Empire had committed mass genocides against non-humanoid races, so it was entirely possible that the people the space was designed to accommodate were not only gone from the base, but the galaxy as a whole. It made a disturbing amount of sense especially because she sincerely disbelieved that there were any repair droids small enough, at the time of its building, to get into the tight space she was in. It had to have been sentient species making the repairs.

Focusing on anything but that thought, Rey reached out with the Force and found the valve she couldn’t touch was turning for her. It was one more thing to add to her list of small victories. Others included locking her door from bed, moving a few ship parts too heavy for anyone to lift and knocking a falling ceiling tile away from Finn’s head during dinner. She smiled, giving herself a mental pat on the back when water didn’t gush out of the patch she’d made on the pipe.

She’d tell Ben about it the next time he showed up. They both knew that her developing Force abilities, now beyond simply lifting rocks, were going to be used against him someday, but he always seemed happy to hear of her progress. It made a good distraction from whatever was bothering him to talk together about how moving things was becoming easier and easier for her and that doing so wasn’t requiring half as much focus as it had before.

He was always encouraging her to investigate other avenues with her abilities, but beyond reaching out to sense life she hadn’t attempted any of the many tricks mentioned in the texts. She could see how being able to explore and manipulate another’s mind might be a useful tool in the midst of a war, but it terrified her to attempt it. She wanted her thoughts to be her own, so why would she invade anyone else’s? It had been easy with the guard in the interrogation room after just a few tries, but she didn’t want it to feel easy. Not with the unwilling.

It wasn’t as if Ben were trying to push her towards anything unreasonable. She had a feeling he was still consciously avoiding fighting with her, and while he didn’t know that she had the texts, nothing he was suggesting she attempt was explicitly “dark side” in nature. She’d checked, but it still felt odd for her to even think about. 

Rey had a feeling that Rose wouldn’t mind being a test subject for her Force manipulation experiments, she was already an open book, and despite knowing each other for a relatively short period of time she was very trusting of Rey in a way that others on base weren’t. She could only imagine what they’d do if they found out everything she could do and who she was doing it with. She tried not to think of it, and she had no plans of asking Rose to let her take a look inside her head or to be mind-tricked.

She tossed her tools back into the satchel she’d slung across her shoulder and clasped it tight. She couldn’t see anything else that needed fixing in the small crawlspace, so she shifted, inch by inch back to the access panel and was careful to avoid the hot water pipe she’d burnt herself on when she entered the space. She was certain it had left a mark, but she wouldn’t bother going to see anyone in medical about it, even the most basic of supplies were in short supply and she could bear the sting if it meant that someone else got bacta and bandages when they needed it.

Rey managed to stick her hand out of the hole, and she wasn’t at all surprised when Rose grabbed onto it and helped to tug her out. She also wasn’t surprised when she was the one to replace the access panel while Rey dusted herself off. She tucked a small braid back behind her ear before turning to face a grinning Rose.

“So what’s with that anyway?” she asked, “Is it a Jedi thing?”

Rey was struck by panic for a moment. She hadn’t thought anyone had noticed it, and it weren’t as if she always wore it. Ben didn’t always braid her hair, and she took it out some mornings because it felt oddly private to her. That was half the reason she kept it tucked behind her ear, so she knew it was there, but that it was also obscured by other strands.

She couldn’t tell Rose about it, not really anyway. She certainly couldn’t explain that she was meeting the Supreme Leader of the First Order by nightfall and that despite the fact that they were enemies, all he wanted to do was seek and give comfort and braid her hair. It was too complicated for even Rose’s open heart and mind to withstand. It felt wrong to lie, so she didn’t.

“To be honest I don’t really know.”

Rose, for her part, seemed satisfied by the vague answer and shrugged, “It looks nice on you.”

Rey smiled at that and gestured for Rose to walk ahead of her as they made their way back up to the main level of the base. For her abilities with the Force, the things that came easily to her like learning languages and picking up on skills quickly, it was of little help to her in finding her way around the chaotically laid out base. Rose, however, always seemed to have a mind for systems and directions. Rey had been following her through the base since they’d arrived, if only so that she didn’t wind up lost and needing to rely on following someone’s Force signature back to the main floor. She’d always been better at finding her way around outdoors than in.

As they walked up the stairs Rose turned to Rey again and asked the question Rey had been waiting for her to ask for weeks. “So Poe and Kaydel?”

Rey shrugged, knowing what Rose was getting at, but relishing in the fact that she was about to have a normal conversation just like anyone else around the base. Rose was good for that, amongst many other things, treating her like she was at least somewhat normal.

“What about them?”

Rose lowered her voice as they reached a main level corridor, lest the pair be within earshot. “Well when Poe came back you two… well, you know?”

“We weren’t really ‘you know’ Rose. I was happy he was back, he was going to kiss me and I didn’t want him to. He walked me back to my quarters and we agreed we make better friends.”

Rose, to Rey’s mild confusion, but overwhelming relief let out an excited whoop.

She smiled at her friend and shook her head.

“I told Finn that! I’ve been telling Finn that, but he’s been avoiding them to be on ‘Team Rey’.”

Rey couldn’t help but let out an involuntary snort laugh as she heard Rose mock Finn’s voice at the end. She imagined that this was what being twenty felt like all the time when war wasn’t demanding seriousness and fear from everyone constantly. She relished it in the moment.

“I appreciate the loyalty, but honestly I like Kaydel and Poe… he isn’t my type.”

Rose gave her a look of faux incredulity, “Rey that implies you have a type.”

As they walked together towards the smell of dinner Rey let herself enjoy Rose’s suggestions of what she imagined Rey’s “type” to be and ignored the fact that she already had a good feeling herself as to what it was.

***

The pieces of her saber floated before her, and her concentration only increased when she felt him enter her space. She hadn’t expected him, but he was not wholly unexpected either. It was never outside the realm of possibility that he would just pop into her day, whether he wanted to or not. She supposed it was the same for him, she’d show up whether she wanted to or not.

 It was getting easier now, for him to show up in her space when neither of them was experiencing mental or emotional implosion. She wasn’t entirely certain that it meant that they were imploding any less, maybe just that they were getting better at hiding it, and that the Force was both kind and cruel enough to shove them together anyway. Sometimes it was in the middle of important work, or in the middle of a meal where they simply ignored each other to minimize the risk of anyone else finding out about their connection.  

At the very least they weren’t fighting anymore. Of course, they were still bickering, but they weren’t fighting. There had been no clear statement of bond related ceasefire between them beyond what they’d determined for nights together, at yet they’d managed to find something like a peace in their daytime encounters.

 “I can see them this time,” he said after a short time sitting cross legged on the floor at her side, “last time I knew you were looking at them, but now I can see them.”

She nodded, allowing her concentration to break. There was little she could do with the mess of metal and crystal, not without help or at least seeing what the internal components should look like when not torn asunder.

Ships were one thing, she could just kill the power to an engine that wasn’t running right, she could hit an electrical fire with an extinguisher, and she generally had a decent idea of what they were supposed to look like. She’d never been afraid of fixing things before, and she wasn’t certain she was now either, but she had a feeling that screwing up the alignment of something in the saber would lose her more than some eyebrow hair and maybe a finger. Having seen the damage, one could do while it was working made her not want to make one explode in her hands.

She didn’t need more scars like the one on her shoulder, least of all one like the one that bisected his cheek.

Rey sighed and let the pieces gently land on her floor. It was past dinner, but too early to sleep. She was tired, but she didn’t feel right crawling into bed just yet. It would be too easy with him there, and even though they’d decided against resisting their bond, it didn’t mean that she’d be ready to let him into her bed every night, even if he always seemed to leave her with a sweet parting gift by morning.

On instinct her hand moved up to touch the small braid, but she settled her hand back into her lap before she could do so. She was reluctant to give him the satisfaction of knowing she touched it all day long, not when he already had the pride of knowing she kept it in at all. She could feel it radiating off him in their bond already.

She had to start being more careful. He had been able to see her bed last night and she’d been able to see his. It had been strange, like she was in his bed and he was in hers. They were beginning to make out more and more of what the other touched during their moments together, and that he could now see the saber, something she wasn’t even touching? It was troublesome to say the least.

“I don’t know why you’re so excited,” she finally managed to mumble, “The stronger this bond grows, the more dangerous it gets.”

She thought to just a few days before when he was in the middle of a meeting and she could very clearly see his data pad in his hands. She still wasn’t certain of why she hadn’t looked at the information it was displaying. He couldn’t stop her from doing so unless he let go of it, shooing her away verbally would only reveal their secret or make him look like a mad man talking to air, neither particularly good options for the Supreme Leader of the First Order. He could have forbidden her from looking through their bond, but he hadn’t needed to. She hadn’t looked, despite any edge it may have given the Resistance.

It felt foolish in hindsight, but in the moment, she couldn’t invade his privacy. He was her enemy, but she couldn’t bear the idea of using their bond in such a way. Not when sometimes, in the night when she awoke with his arms around her, it felt like something more, something sacred.

He didn’t seem as concerned as she was when he shook his head. His hair was a mess, and she noted how flushed he looked. She wondered if maybe he’d just been training. If the Force ever connected them when they were both alone with a couple staves, she might like to see what that looked like.

“I don’t know why you aren’t more excited. My assumption is, the more we learn about it, the better we can control it.”

She huffed and gathered the pieces of her saber in her hands before crossing her room to set them carefully into the footlocker that contained the rest of her possessions, as meager and valueless as they were. Even the texts in the box contained little of worth, no many how many times she read them over they revealed little that may be useful to her. He might be right, that the only way they could learn about their bond would be by allowing it to exist and carefully observing its qualities. She didn’t want to say as much, however. Part of her thought that it was just in his nature to enjoy studying things, how excited he was when their bond first manifested had been a clue.

“And what if we can’t?” It had been a thought half formed in her head for days now. One she hadn’t allowed to find purchase until now, face to face with her unwitting partner. “What if we can’t control it and I do peek at your datapad next time you’re in a meeting? What if I touch a door or a viewport and you figure out where we are? Kriff, we’re on opposite sides of a war, what is this bond good for if not for finding information on how to best kill each other?”

She was still learning about the Force, what it was, why she could bend it to her will at times and have it abandon her entirely in others. Without anyone to teach her thanks to the First Order’s policies regarding Force sensitives she had only her own experiences to learn from. All she was certain of so far was that the Force had a sick sense of humor. Thanks to Kylo Ren, she had no one to tell her any different.

But it wasn’t Kylo Ren who had risen from the floor behind her. It wasn’t his eyes she met when she turned, no, those eyes belonged to Ben Solo, and they were focused on her so intently that she felt a blush rise to her cheeks despite the subject at hand. In another life she would love for him to look at her like that every day.

“Is that what you want it to be?”

She was surprised by his words. He seemed strangely calm despite what she’d said, and his question was an odd one to speak into existence so casually. She was still wary of anyone asking her what she wanted. Choice was a rare and elusive thing to her.

“No,” she said, deciding to be honest after taking her fill of the deep and meaningful look he was giving her, “but I don’t see how it can be any other way. I won’t… I can’t let anyone harm the Resistance.”

She was certain that he understood that she meant him and all those who followed him when she said “anyone”, but despite how he’d taken her decision to save her friends on the Supremacy, he didn’t seem to be upset or even surprised by her words. He just looked tired which somewhat dimmed the intensity of the look he was giving her. She had a feeling that his exhaustion had less to do with the fact that he’d been training, and more to do with the weight of their predicament resting as surely on his shoulders as it was on hers. The fate of the galaxy was a heavy burden to bear when you wanted to hold onto something else.

He was giving her a look that was both soft and thoughtful. They’d lost each other before over the same point of contention, even before their bond cemented itself as something insurmountable between them. She wasn’t about to budge, even if the part of her that embraced her ability to choose wanted nothing more than to brush his sweaty hair away from his forehead and say that it would all be alright. She wouldn’t waver and put her friends in danger for a pair of pretty eyes, not again.

“And I can’t let you see anything that would jeopardize the Order,” he responded, although his heart didn’t seem in it to her.

He looked away from her when he said it, something in his voice wavering just enough to let her think that maybe, just maybe, he didn’t feel as strongly about his answer than she did about hers. She chalked it up to exhaustion, if only because to hope anything else felt like she was dreaming, and she’d spent too many nights dreaming on Jakku.

“Then we’re at an impasse.”

Rey said it and deflated only slightly under the weight of her own words. He wasn’t angry with her. She always felt his anger through their bond before he was even able to react. It was one of the many factors that made her both appreciate and dread their bond. Being able to sense the other’s feelings was what brought them together to begin with, but it also meant that it was one more way that they were bound to know too much about one another. Sometimes she thought that they might even be able to feel each other’s physical pain. She’d felt phantom aches in the past and when she’d burnt herself on the pipe that very morning, she’d felt sympathy coming from his end of their bond even though she hadn’t consciously done anything to alert him of her pain.

“I think of it more as an unavoidable agreement,” he said, his voice so low that she almost thought that he was communicating with her wordlessly again.

He was close. She hadn’t noticed them moving together, but she knew that it wasn’t just him that had moved. She’d met him in the middle, and she had to look down at her feet to keep them from taking another step or two forward into what was truly considered his personal space.

“I won’t use our connection to spy on you and your… friends,” he said the word like it pained him, but quickly recovered, “And you won’t use it to learn anything about our operations.”

It would be so easy to agree, to trust him as she had been for quite some time, but this felt like more of a promise than she’d made before. Providing comfort to avoid splitting headaches, being something like tentative friends in the night to survive, it was something that she’d agreed to for the sake of comfort, but this felt like a promise that wasn’t hers to make. This meant potentially putting others in harm’s way, and while she wasn’t used to making decisions, she also loathed the idea of someone else making them for her. The last time she’d trusted someone with something so important she’d spent the rest of her life on a desert planet scrounging for food.

“I won’t break a promise with you Rey. I’m not like them.”

Her gaze jerked up from her feet and met his eye. He couldn’t have been reading her thoughts, she would feel the intrusion, and their bond didn’t allow him that kind of access, of that much she was certain. She could feel the wildness in her own eyes, the barely contained panic that threw her body into fight or flight mode and made her want to slam their bond closed.

_You were projecting._

He didn’t say it out loud. It felt strangely reassuring that he would save that piece of conversation for a space as intimate of their shared mental speaking space.

“I can’t promise not to evacuate if you’re sending a dreadnought to our door and I know about it,” she said deescalating the intimacy of the moment by taking a half step back from him.

He let out a huff of air that sounded too much like a relieved exhalation of a held breath for him to be able to pass it off as anything else. She wasn’t sure of what to make of it when she felt something warm creep through their bond unbidden.

“If a dreadnought was heading your way, I’d inform you myself.”

She knew it was true. She could feel the honesty of his words and she thought that maybe it had something to do with the odd sensation of protectiveness she’d both felt herself in quiet moments, and that she’d felt from him from time to time. She remembered it from the throne room.

She shook her head to clear away the thought, “I don’t know that I would return the favor.”

It was only a half lie. She wasn’t sure that she’d warn him if they were making a final stand, but she also had the same sense of protectiveness tugging at her gut that said she wouldn’t want him to die either. She might not warn him, but it didn’t mean that she wouldn’t try to cuff him instead of kill him. If she thought that wasn’t an option, if she thought someone else would try to end his life, she might just warn him with only enough time to escape.

He grinned then, “I suppose it’s a good thing the Rebels are short on dreadnoughts then.”

She almost smiled back. Not that she’d ever say it out loud, or even through their bond, but when he smiled that fiendishly he somehow looked less like a villain than he did when his face was flat. His grins, especially the wicked ones, made him look more like the rogue that his pedigree might suggest. Sometimes she could see Han in him, even when he swore he’d killed the last traces of the man in the galaxy. Even if he said that Ben Solo was dead, she saw him every time they connected. When she spoke to him, it was that name on her tongue.

“Are you certain you want to go this way Ben? It won’t be easy.”

He stuck his hand out to her, expression quickly returning to one of exhausted acceptance.

“I don’t think we can get out of this alive any other way.”

Rey cautiously let her hand stretch out to meet his. It was too much like the first time she’d let her guard down around him, but despite their predicament, she wasn’t so blindly optimistic this time.

“To staying alive until we have to kill each other.”

His sad smile wasn’t lost on her. 

When he left there was a dull hum in the force, like the white noise of a com with no one on the other end. She carefully unbraided her hair, her fingers combing and smoothing his work as if they could pick up the remnants of his touch there for comfort. 


End file.
